Triathlon Training Update:
Two new records!!
1. Tuesday: swam 1250 yds in 33 minutes. All freestyle+breaststroke, no rest. That's a new personal best.
2. Wednesday: 2.3 mile jog to work (in hills) in 20 minutes. Also a new personal best.
The 4.3 mile jog home from work is still about 43 minutes, so I think I'm going slower as I get more tired. Or maybe it's an evening thing.
In light of how fast "runners" run and how fast "swimmers" swim, I know my times don't look like much. But I'm neither a "runner" nor a "swimmer," so I'm pretty darn pleased!
Thursday, March 31, 2005
WHEW! Posting all those pictures sure was exhausting! That's my excuse for not posting in over a week. But really the excuse is that I've been out of town (as usual!). And, of course, when I got back, catching up with things I couldn't do because I was out of town.
March 18 was SNG's and my 10th anniversary so we took a weekend trip to Wilmington. We had a hotel room on Wrightsville beach with a balcony overlooking the Atlantic. The weather was a little crappy. Saturday was cold, windy, and a little bit rainy, but we were determined to have fun, so we just did all the things we wanted to do only we did them in the cold, windy, rainy weather. Except I didn't get to use my new swimsuit. Bummer.
We ate at terrific seafood places all weekend. One place, called Bridge Minder's, was good enough that we went twice! We also found a funky place for breakfast called Middle of the Island. It's a little diner that was mostly full of locals as far as we could tell. On Saturday we rented a couple of beach cruisers for the day (see SNG's picture below this post). They were single-speed bikes with coaster brakes. Scary! But fun. Way fun. Sunday the weather was gorgeous (but still cold & windy). We walked on the beach and watched the surfers. Then we drove home.
And I packed for Milwaukee. And left Monday morning. And was there until Friday night.
Actually, Milwaukee (hereafter referred to as MKE) wasn't too bad. The hotel I stayed in was average, but it was attached to a (second-rate) mall downtown, so I was able to do some lécher vitrines. The restaurants within walking distance of the hotel were of the highest calibur: Applebee's was the crowning glory, but there was also Mo's Irish Pub and a burrito place. And of course, we cannot forget to mention the decadent food court at the mall. Only at the mall food court can you find Bourbon Street Chicken, a dish so exclusive that even I, who grew up in New Orleans and spend many evenings during those formative teenage years on Bourbon street, had never heard of it until about 5 years ago, when I first saw it in Boston, MA. Only fast-food chinese food chefs know the secret to this gourmet delicacy. And then there is Sbarro, the pinnacle of Italian culinary mastery. BIG slices of pizza. Shaker jars of powdered parmesan cheese-food product. It's genius, I tell you.
Sadly, I was only able to experience these restaurants on the first day I was in town. After that, the client for whom I was teaching had planned lunch and dinner dates for me with students every day. Now I have to say, this is something I wish every onsite customer would do. Normally, I teach classes full of students who may or may not want to be there. If it's an on-site class, it is usually arranged by someone who is not actually taking the class. I show up, I teach all day, I go back to my hotel, I eat alone, I go to sleep, get up, shampoo, rinse, repeat.
But this class was arranged by a director who asked all his managers to send their statisticians for 3 weeks of training (I was week 3) and he sat in on the whole thing. One of his motives for having the onsite class was the opportunity to have a captive instructor-- someone who is devoted to that one company for the entire time. This opens opportunities for one-on-one discussions that you can't really have in public training courses. So I think he arranged all the lunch and dinner dates for 2 reasons-- 1, to help me feel welcome and 2, to get a little free consulting for his statisticians. Which is just fine with me! I love having company, I love talking shop, and I really liked these students. They were really friendly and seemed to genuinely want to be in class. And they know some really good places to eat in MKE (only accessible by car).
It's those kind of classes that remind me why I like my job.
The trip home and last weekend are topics for a new post- this one is getting really long.
If I leave you with a cliffhanger, maybe you'll all come back and anxiously await the next post! While you're waiting, why not leave me a comment? I love comments. They are evidence that I'm not just talking to thin air.
March 18 was SNG's and my 10th anniversary so we took a weekend trip to Wilmington. We had a hotel room on Wrightsville beach with a balcony overlooking the Atlantic. The weather was a little crappy. Saturday was cold, windy, and a little bit rainy, but we were determined to have fun, so we just did all the things we wanted to do only we did them in the cold, windy, rainy weather. Except I didn't get to use my new swimsuit. Bummer.
We ate at terrific seafood places all weekend. One place, called Bridge Minder's, was good enough that we went twice! We also found a funky place for breakfast called Middle of the Island. It's a little diner that was mostly full of locals as far as we could tell. On Saturday we rented a couple of beach cruisers for the day (see SNG's picture below this post). They were single-speed bikes with coaster brakes. Scary! But fun. Way fun. Sunday the weather was gorgeous (but still cold & windy). We walked on the beach and watched the surfers. Then we drove home.
And I packed for Milwaukee. And left Monday morning. And was there until Friday night.
Actually, Milwaukee (hereafter referred to as MKE) wasn't too bad. The hotel I stayed in was average, but it was attached to a (second-rate) mall downtown, so I was able to do some lécher vitrines. The restaurants within walking distance of the hotel were of the highest calibur: Applebee's was the crowning glory, but there was also Mo's Irish Pub and a burrito place. And of course, we cannot forget to mention the decadent food court at the mall. Only at the mall food court can you find Bourbon Street Chicken, a dish so exclusive that even I, who grew up in New Orleans and spend many evenings during those formative teenage years on Bourbon street, had never heard of it until about 5 years ago, when I first saw it in Boston, MA. Only fast-food chinese food chefs know the secret to this gourmet delicacy. And then there is Sbarro, the pinnacle of Italian culinary mastery. BIG slices of pizza. Shaker jars of powdered parmesan cheese-food product. It's genius, I tell you.
Sadly, I was only able to experience these restaurants on the first day I was in town. After that, the client for whom I was teaching had planned lunch and dinner dates for me with students every day. Now I have to say, this is something I wish every onsite customer would do. Normally, I teach classes full of students who may or may not want to be there. If it's an on-site class, it is usually arranged by someone who is not actually taking the class. I show up, I teach all day, I go back to my hotel, I eat alone, I go to sleep, get up, shampoo, rinse, repeat.
But this class was arranged by a director who asked all his managers to send their statisticians for 3 weeks of training (I was week 3) and he sat in on the whole thing. One of his motives for having the onsite class was the opportunity to have a captive instructor-- someone who is devoted to that one company for the entire time. This opens opportunities for one-on-one discussions that you can't really have in public training courses. So I think he arranged all the lunch and dinner dates for 2 reasons-- 1, to help me feel welcome and 2, to get a little free consulting for his statisticians. Which is just fine with me! I love having company, I love talking shop, and I really liked these students. They were really friendly and seemed to genuinely want to be in class. And they know some really good places to eat in MKE (only accessible by car).
It's those kind of classes that remind me why I like my job.
The trip home and last weekend are topics for a new post- this one is getting really long.
If I leave you with a cliffhanger, maybe you'll all come back and anxiously await the next post! While you're waiting, why not leave me a comment? I love comments. They are evidence that I'm not just talking to thin air.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Monday, March 14, 2005
OK, so as you have no doubt noticed by now, I have finally started using Hello to post pictures to my blog. Which is really neat and fun, but they're posting as posts, and I think I'd rather have them in the margin somewhere. Unfortunately, I am a klutz with all object-oriented languages, so trying to work out the html to get a separate column in my blog that only posts pictures will be a chore that I'm probably too lazy to take on.
Since my blog automatically archives, I guess I'll just have to keep my pictures up-to-date! That's probably a good idea anyway.
We had a fun weekend. SNG and I are starting to feel guilty about having such nice weekends during lent. Maybe we should drive up to Erie next weekend for penance. I am sure I just jinxed us really bad there. Anyway, we went on the frosty 50 ride Saturday and it wasn't frosty at all. But it was very very windy. The kind of thing where you ride along nestled as close as possible to the rear wheel of the rider in front of you, wheezing for breath, and look down to find you're going 13 mph.
And on the way back-- everyone is gunning down the road at 23 mph with the wind at our backs, one guy empties his bottle on the ground just before the last hill of the ride and there's a mad dash for the bike shop. At that point everyone has forgotten that there ever was a headwind.
We did some shopping later and bought a new George. We got the "next generation" one with the removable grill plates. The old miniGeorge is going to Goodwill. For fun we grilled all the vegetables that could be balanced on the grill plates without rolling off and then we grilled some wet paper towels, our fingers, whatever we could find. A good time all around.
Sunday we took an easy trail ride with some friends who are going on the Montreal trip this summer. We watched the water in Umstead park. We passed a lot of horses. And horsepoo. And afterwards we went swimming, but not serious swimming. More like put-on-the-fins-and-see-how-fast-you-can-get-across-the-pool swimming. And practice-walking-handstands-up-&-down-the-lane swimming.
In other words, we didn't do anything responsible at all. Yay!
Since my blog automatically archives, I guess I'll just have to keep my pictures up-to-date! That's probably a good idea anyway.
We had a fun weekend. SNG and I are starting to feel guilty about having such nice weekends during lent. Maybe we should drive up to Erie next weekend for penance. I am sure I just jinxed us really bad there. Anyway, we went on the frosty 50 ride Saturday and it wasn't frosty at all. But it was very very windy. The kind of thing where you ride along nestled as close as possible to the rear wheel of the rider in front of you, wheezing for breath, and look down to find you're going 13 mph.
And on the way back-- everyone is gunning down the road at 23 mph with the wind at our backs, one guy empties his bottle on the ground just before the last hill of the ride and there's a mad dash for the bike shop. At that point everyone has forgotten that there ever was a headwind.
We did some shopping later and bought a new George. We got the "next generation" one with the removable grill plates. The old miniGeorge is going to Goodwill. For fun we grilled all the vegetables that could be balanced on the grill plates without rolling off and then we grilled some wet paper towels, our fingers, whatever we could find. A good time all around.
Sunday we took an easy trail ride with some friends who are going on the Montreal trip this summer. We watched the water in Umstead park. We passed a lot of horses. And horsepoo. And afterwards we went swimming, but not serious swimming. More like put-on-the-fins-and-see-how-fast-you-can-get-across-the-pool swimming. And practice-walking-handstands-up-&-down-the-lane swimming.
In other words, we didn't do anything responsible at all. Yay!
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